It was a frustrating season for Justin Verlander but he doesn’t plan on it being his last. He told reporters, including Matt Kawahara of the Houston Chronicle, that he plans on pitching again in 2025. “I think I do feel like I have a lot more to give pitching-wise,” Verlander said. “This year was a tough year. Learned a lot from it.”
Verlander was only able to make 17 starts and log 90 1/3 innings this year. He started the year on the injured list due to some shoulder inflammation, though he was reinstated in the middle of April. After 10 starts with a 3.95 ERA and 21.3% strikeout rate, he went back on the IL due to neck discomfort, an injury that perhaps he never really recovered from. He was reinstated from the IL in August but opined last month that he may have returned too quickly. He reiterated that sentiment this week.
“I’ve talked to you guys about how I was feeling coming back and how I needed to push the issue a bit. Kind of a weird injury in the neck. Tried as best I could to get out there and be an asset to help this team in October but wasn’t able to do it.”
Verlander made seven more starts in August and September but his strikeout rate was just 14.6% in that time as he allowed 30 earned runs in 33 1/3 innings. That gave him an 8.10 ERA in that stretch and bumped his season-long ERA to 5.48, the highest of his career apart from a two-start debut back in 2005. With those poor results, the Astros decided to leave him off their postseason roster. Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown started the club’s two games against the Tigers but Houston lost both, ending their season prior to the ALCS for the first time since 2016.
“Obviously, wasn’t pitching well enough to be a part of this series,” Verlander said. “But having an offseason to kind of get things right, I definitely feel like I want to continue to pitch and compete. And I’m not ready to step away yet.”
Despite the rough campaign, Verlander is determined to keep going, which isn’t surprising. Way back in 2018, he told Jon Morosi of MLB.com that he wanted to pitch until he was 45 if he could. He is still a few years away from that marker, as he is set to turn 42 in February.
Perhaps the health issues give him an explanation for his rough results, but increased injury woes are to be expected for a player pushing his career to great lengths. Keeping his body in a place where he can maximize his results will be a challenge but one that Verlander is surely going to tackle as best as he can.
It wasn’t too long ago that Verlander was still posting elite results. Though he missed most of 2020 and all of 2021 recovering from Tommy John surgery, he had an incredible bounce back in 2022. At the age of 39 and after missing almost two full years, he tossed 175 innings over 28 starts with a 1.75 ERA, 27.8% strikeout rate and 4.4% walk rate.
He won that year’s American League Cy Young award and went into free agency on a strong note. He was able to secure a two-year deal with a $43.33MM annual salary from the Mets, as well as a conditional player option for 2025. The first year of the deal went fine for Verlander personally, though the Mets fell out of contention and dealt him back to Houston at the deadline. He finished 2023 with a 3.22 ERA over 27 starts, despite his strikeout rate falling to 21.5%.
As mentioned, the results backed up here in 2024. The injuries preventing him from unlocking the $35MM player option, as he needed to toss 140 innings this year but finished well short of that. That means he is slated to return to the open market in a few weeks.
He will naturally have significantly less earning power than he did two years ago, both on account of his increased age and worse platform season, but there should still be a notable deal for him out there. Zack Greinke got $8.5MM from the Royals for 2023, his age-39 season. He secured that on the heels of a 2022 campaign in which he tossed 137 innings with a 3.68 ERA but a 12.5% strikeout rate. Lance Lynn had an ERA of 5.73 in 2023 but was still able to secure an $11MM guarantee from the Cardinals for 2024, his age-37 season. Corey Kluber got a $10MM guarantee from the Red Sox for 2023, his age-37 season, despite plenty of notable health concerns in prior seasons.
Verlander is going into his age-42 season and will be older than all of those pitchers were when those deals were signed, but he also has a more impressive overall track record and plenty of recent success he can point to. For a closer age comparison, Rich Hill got $8MM from the Pirates going into 2023, his age-43 season. He got that after tossing 124 1/3 innings with a 4.27 ERA the year prior. That’s a better platform year than what Verlander is current taking to free agency but Hill’s overall résumé can’t match up to Verlander’s.
In short, there will be opportunities available to Verlander, the question will be where. He has spent most of his recent career with the Astros, with that brief stint with the Mets the notable exception. Perhaps he and the club will reunite again, as they could use some rotation help. As of now, their 2025 starting pitching group projects to include Valdez, Brown, Ronel Blanco and Spencer Arrighetti. They could fill out that group with Luis Garcia, Lance McCullers Jr. or J.P. France, though those pitchers are currently unknown quantities after missing most or all of 2024 while recovering from surgeries.
Per RosterResource, the Astros project to be have a spending gap of more than $100MM between 2024 and 2025, both in terms of pure payroll and their competitive balance tax number. However, that gap is actually narrower when considering the full picture. The arbitration projections from MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz have the Astros slated to pay over $58MM to a group headlined by Valdez and Kyle Tucker. A couple of non-tenders will knock that down a bit, but the club also plans to discuss a significant contract with impending free agent Alex Bregman. They also have a hole at first base that will need to be addressed somehow.
Given that the club has traded for Verlander a couple of times and also re-signed him in free agency twice, it’s probably fair to expect that they will work something out regardless of where the budget goes in the months to come, though it’s also possible they decide it’s time to go in a different direction. Wherever he ends up, Verlander will be looking to add to a body of work that already has him as a lock for the Hall of Fame. He has 262 wins, the most among active pitchers, while his 3,416 strikeouts are 10th on the all-time list.